A 22 residence building on a bend of the Brisbane River has cleared development assessment. The detail worth noting sits in how the approval was assessed, not in the architecture.
GRAYA has development approval for Silk, a 15 level residential building on the Brisbane River at St Lucia. The approval covers 16 and 18 Sandford Street, an 810 square metre parcel made up of two lots on a defining bend of the river about three and a half kilometres from the Brisbane CBD.
Brisbane City Council’s development register lists the application as decided and approved, recorded under application A006976258 for building work and a material change of use for multiple dwellings.
The approved scheme is 22 residences across 15 levels. Sixteen are split floor homes. Six occupy a full floor. GRAYA has designed the project and will build it.
For a suburb that has spent two decades being described as tightly held, the more useful part of the news is what is left behind it. Genuine riverfront development sites in St Lucia are close to exhausted, and the approval clears the way for construction planning to begin without delay.
A bend in the river, and 20 metres of frontage
The site holds a northern aspect across Orleigh Park on the West End bank toward the CBD skyline. That orientation is most of the reason the parcel carried the value it did. North facing riverfront in Brisbane delivers direct sun, direct city views and an outlook in two directions along the reach. The bend is what creates the second half of that.
GRAYA acquired the property for $17 million, a week into a five week expressions of interest campaign run through RWC Queensland. The site rate landed at close to $21,000 a square metre. The parcel carries 20 metres of absolute river frontage and an existing house with a private pontoon that will be removed for the project.
Council records show 18 Sandford Street on its own as a 405 square metre lot. Amalgamating the two lots is what produced a parcel capable of carrying a tower at all, which is a reminder that on this stretch of the river the constraint is rarely planning appetite. It is land.
St Lucia is one of those suburbs people do not want to leave. They know the river, the trees, UQ, the golf course, Toowong and Indooroopilly, and that familiarity is hard to replace. True riverfront opportunities here are exceptionally scarce.
ROB GRAY, CO FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GRAYA
The approval went through as a code assessable application
Council’s register records the assessment level for Silk as code. Public notification is listed as not applicable.
For a 15 level building on absolute riverfront in an established residential suburb, that is not the pathway most people would assume. Applications of that scale are usually impact assessable, publicly notified, and exposed to third party submissions and appeal rights that can run for months.
Code assessment happens when a proposal sits inside what the planning scheme already anticipates. The site is in the High Density Residential zone under Brisbane City Plan 2014, in a part of the inner west where the scheme contemplates residential buildings up to 15 levels in well located riverfront locations. Silk was designed to 15.
The practical effect is a shorter and more predictable path to a decision. Code assessable applications are assessed against the relevant codes rather than opened to public submission, which takes out both the notification period and the appeal exposure that travels with it.
None of that makes the design timid. It makes it deliberate. Height, setbacks and density were resolved against the scheme rather than argued around it, and the approval reflects that.
Building on the riverbank is its own problem
Approval retires one risk. The site is the next one.
Riverside construction in Brisbane brings a specific set of conditions. Flood planning levels. Bank stability. Restricted access on a narrow residential street. Deep excavation close to a river edge, with the lodged scheme carrying four basement levels. These are the difficult site conditions on the bank that separate a riverfront address from a riverfront build.
GRAYA has just worked through a version of that problem a short distance upstream. The company recently completed ARC in Toowong as builder for developer Spyre Group, a 24 residence riverfront building on the same reach of the river, delivered through constrained conditions on the bank.
That is the case GRAYA makes for itself here. The company designs, develops and constructs its own projects under a single point of accountability, from first drawing through to aftercare, and it has now done the constrained riverside version of the job on this stretch of water.
Genuine riverfront sites of this quality in St Lucia are not something that comes up regularly. The approval removes a substantial layer of execution risk, and the location underwrites demand in a way very few inner-city sites can. The fundamentals here are as strong as anything we have assessed in Brisbane.
ANDREW GRAY, CO FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, GRAYA
Where Silk sits in GRAYA’s current book
Silk is the third waterfront position GRAYA has moved on inside 18 months. On the Gold Coast the company expanded its Coral site at Palm Beach with an adjoining purchase, then chose to build fewer and larger homes rather than more of them. In Brisbane it acquired 19 Chester Street at Newstead for $40 million and lodged The Silo, a 170 residence proposal linking James Street to Gasworks.
Silk runs the same logic at a smaller scale. Twenty two homes on 810 square metres is a low yield outcome for a high density zone. GRAYA has been explicit that the approved design weighted scale, privacy and outlook ahead of yield, and that the buyer it is targeting is an owner occupier who wants the proportions of a house without the maintenance of one.
The depth of Brisbane’s premium apartment market is the commercial question sitting under every project of this type. St Lucia offers about as strong an answer as the city has: an established suburb with a university, a golf course, a ferry terminal, a settled buyer base and very little left to build on.
What we have designed at Silk is a way to stay in the suburb people love, with the scale and privacy of a private home and far less to maintain. This is not typical apartment product. It is a proper home on the river, and that is exactly what this market has been missing.
ROB GRAY, CO FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GRAYA
THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE
The interesting number in this approval is not 22 residences or 15 levels. It is the assessment level. A tower of this scale on absolute riverfront in an established suburb was decided as a code assessable application, which means the scheme was drawn to the height and density the planning scheme already contemplated for the site rather than pushed past it and argued. That choice trades a margin of potential yield for a shorter decision path and a much narrower set of things that can go wrong between lodgement and site establishment. On a parcel carrying $17 million of holding cost, that is not a design preference. It is a program decision, and it is the part of the story that travels beyond St Lucia.es rise is something else, and it is the number worth watching when the final March quarter data lands in October.
Frequently asked questions
Silk is at 16 and 18 Sandford Street, St Lucia, in Brisbane’s inner west. The site is an 810 square metre parcel across two lots on a bend of the Brisbane River, roughly three and a half kilometres from the Brisbane CBD, with a northern aspect across Orleigh Park toward the city skyline.
The approved scheme is 22 residences across 15 levels. Sixteen are split floor homes and six occupy a full floor. Ground level includes a landscaped entry, lobby, gym and communal open space running toward the river edge, with further shared amenity on the rooftop.
GRAYA. The Brisbane based company designs, develops and constructs its own projects under a single point of accountability rather than appointing an external builder. Its recent Brisbane work includes ARC Residences at Toowong, which it built for developer Spyre Group.
A code assessable application is assessed by council against the relevant codes in the planning scheme. It is not publicly notified, so there is no submission period and no third party appeal rights attached to submissions. It applies when a proposal is of a type, scale and intensity the planning scheme already anticipates for that site. Silk was recorded on Brisbane City Council’s register at a code assessment level, which is unusual for a 15 level riverfront building and reflects a scheme designed to sit within the height the zone contemplates.
GRAYA has said the approval allows construction planning to begin without delay, but a confirmed start date has not been published. Reporting at the time the application was lodged indicated a construction start in late 2026 with completion expected in 2028. Those were indications given before the approval was decided and should be treated as such.
St Lucia sits on a loop of the Brisbane River with a limited number of parcels holding genuine absolute river frontage, and most of those are occupied by established houses in long term ownership. Sites large enough to support an apartment building generally require two or more lots to be amalgamated, which depends on neighbouring owners selling at the same time. That combination is why parcels of this type reach the market rarely and transact quickly when they do.
Silk is at 16 and 18 Sandford Street, St Lucia. GRAYA’s portfolio is at graya.com.au.
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Last updated: 26 August 2026. Approval status, application number, assessment level and site area are drawn from Brisbane City Council’s Development.i register. Acquisition price, site rate and river frontage are drawn from the selling agent’s published campaign record. Residence mix and project positioning are GRAYA’s own.
This article is general information only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not legal, financial or planning advice. Planning outcomes vary by site and by local government area. You should seek your own professional advice before acting on anything in this article.
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